Home » Posts tagged 'black swan' (Page 2)
Tag Archives: black swan
Why the fight for GMO labeling is (possibly) over
Why the fight for GMO labeling is (possibly) over Ever since it became clear that Vermont’s law for mandatory labeling of foods containing genetically engineered ingredients would actually go into force this summer, the big question has been how many food companies would choose to label their products and how many would choose simply not to […]
Austria Just Announced A 54% Haircut Of Senior Creditors In First “Bail In” Under New European Rules
Austria Just Announced A 54% Haircut Of Senior Creditors In First “Bail In” Under New European Rules Just over a year ago, a black swan landed in the middle of Europe, when in what was then dubbed a “Spectacular Development” In Austria, the “bad bank” of failed Hypo Alpe Adria – the Heta Asset Resolution AG […]
China Warns Officials: Allow Social Unrest, Lose Your Job
China Warns Officials: Allow Social Unrest, Lose Your Job To be sure, there are always going to be financial and geopolitical landmines and every once in awhile we – and by “we” we’re referring to the market, or the country, or humanity, or whatever collective you want to choose – are going to step on […]
Who’s Anti-American?
Who’s Anti-American? Maryland! The Old Line bugle, fife, and drum, Maryland! She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb. Huzza! She spurns the Northern scum! She breathes! She burns! She’ll come! She’ll come! Maryland! My Maryland! – Maryland’s State Song J’accuse… Illustration by James Montgomery Flagg Guilty as Charged BALTIMORE – Yesterday, one dear reader […]
Has The Market Crash Only Just Begun?
Has The Market Crash Only Just Begun? Having successfully called the market’s retreat in the fall of 2015, Universa’s Mark Spitznagel is not taking a victory lap as he warns Bloomberg TV that “the crash has only just begun.” Investors are facing the most binary “let’s make a deal” market in history in Spitznagel’s view: choose Door #1 to […]
Stocks Slump After Saudis Threaten Nukes Against “Nefarious” Iran
Stocks Slump After Saudis Threaten Nukes Against “Nefarious” Iran Earlier this month, a black swan landed in the Mid-East when Saudi Arabia executed prominent Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr along with 46 other “terrorists.” Most of those executed were not Shiites but that didn’t matter. Al-Nimr was a key voice among Saudi Arabia’s dissident Shiite minority […]
Saudis Boost Gas Prices by 40%, Dismantle Welfare State To Wage War With U.S. Shale
Saudis Boost Gas Prices by 40%, Dismantle Welfare State To Wage War With U.S. Shale Earlier today, we parsed Saudi Arabia’s budget report in order to determine if the kingdom’s fiscal nightmare was better or worse than market expectations. As it turns out, it was better. This year’s deficit is expected to come in at around 15-16% […]
Waiting to be SKEWered?
Waiting to be SKEWered? SKEW Goes Pear-Shaped Back in 1998, at the height of the Russian crisis, the CBOE SKEW Index reached its all time high of 146.88. Previously very high values were seen on the eve of the 1990 recession, and in March 2006 it spiked again when sudden worries about the housing bubble […]
Catalan Secessionists Set To Win Election Amid Record Turnout
Catalan Secessionists Set To Win Election Amid Record Turnout On Friday we previewed what we said could be the next European black swan. In short, elections in Catalonia on Sunday were a proxy for an independence referendum. The outcome is critical for several reasons, not the least of which are i) Spain’s debt-to-GDP ratio could […]
China’s “Credit Mystery” Deepens, As Moody’s Warns On Shadow Financing
China’s “Credit Mystery” Deepens, As Moody’s Warns On Shadow Financing Last month, we took a detailed look at what we said could be a multi-trillion yuan black swan. In short, one of China’s many spinning plates is the country’s vast shadow banking complex which allowed local governments to skirt borrowing restrictions leading directly to the accumulation of […]
Counterintuitive: (Some) volatility is good for you, stability not so much
Counterintuitive: (Some) volatility is good for you, stability not so much With stock markets around the world plunging and commodity prices in free fall, it seems appropriate to return to a theme which I’ve taken up previously: That a certain amount of volatility is good for humans and the systems they build, and that attempts to […]
Another Black Swan? Syriza Outcasts Form New Political Party, Will Push For Grexit
Another Black Swan? Syriza Outcasts Form New Political Party, Will Push For Grexit Once upon a time, Panagiotis Lafazanis had a plan to save Greece. On July 14, just two days after Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras sold out the Greek referendum “no” vote by agreeing to a shockingly punitive bailout deal in Brussels, Lafazanis convened a meeting […]
Progress in an Uncertain World
Progress in an Uncertain World Strong Towns is often accused of offering doom-and-gloom diagnoses of problems but being light on solutions. “You don’t tell us what we can actually DO to fix our insolvent cities,” goes the response. “You’re just so negative all the time.” This is not true, but I also don’t think it’s […]
The 8 Trillion Black Swan: Is China’s Shadow Banking System About To Collapse?
The 8 Trillion Black Swan: Is China’s Shadow Banking System About To Collapse? “Wealth management products in China have come under the spotlight after a series of missed payments raised concerns over the shadow banking sector that often directs credit to firms shut out from bank lending or capital markets,” Reuters said in February, after reporting […]